The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Network switches are configured to forward network traffic between a plurality of ports connected to communication links. For high throughput applications, network switches are often implemented using hardware such as an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC). When a new networking protocol is introduced and the hardware (e.g., ASIC) of a network switch was designed prior to the introduction of the new networking protocol, the network switch may have difficulty processing packets that conform to the new networking protocol.